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In This Newsletter

  • The Mission — March 2018 -- COPYWhen love is lost, love is the answer
  • The Mission — April 2018 5The lies of drugs, the power of love
  • The Mission — April 2018 4Stories from Skid Row: Krysta
  • Families, Faith and a Risen HopeNotes from Andy
The Mission - December 2016

WHEN LOVE IS LOST, LOVE IS THE ANSWER

Healing the Wounds of a Lifetime — By Oscar

By the age of 9, everyone Oscar ever loved had died. Drugs helped him stop crying. But would he ever find healing?

When I was 5 years old, life was good. I was an only child and my parents cherished me. Life was one big party. But the party crashed that year when my mother was murdered. I was too young to understand much about God, but I had issues with Him from that point on.

Then it got worse. Six months later, my dad died of cancer. I was sent to live with an aunt and her alcoholic husband, who would tie me to chairs and beat me bloody. When I was 9, I discovered I also had an older half sister, who came to live with us. I made her promise she’d never leave me. But she soon died of a heroin overdose. Everyone I’d ever loved had died. People said, “God took them all home.” All I wanted to do was cry.

Anything to numb the pain

That all changed when I took my first hit of marijuana in 6th grade. Suddenly I didn’t want to cry anymore. I didn’t feel anything. Marijuana and other drugs — including crack and various opioid-based painkillers — kept me numb for the next 40 years. I never got high to get high. I got high so I never had to cry. So I could check out and never feel.

A year ago, however, I realized I owed it to myself and my wife to change that. But I needed help. So I came to Union Rescue Mission to help me deal with the God who took my family away, to face the pain I’d hid away for more than 40 years, and to reconnect with people again. To feel joy and love again.

When I got here, I started reading the Bible. The more I encountered the real Jesus, the more He filled me and transformed my life. But I really wasn’t going to change until I faced the 5-year-old wounded child I’d hidden away for so long. I had to face Oscar — and I couldn’t do it alone.

Out of the darkness and into the light

My chaplain, Albert, walked with me every step of the way as I met that hurt child and faced the pain. He held my hand as I cried, he prayed with me, and he led me through the darkness.

Today, I don’t have to hide anymore. I have a true relationship with God, myself, my wife, and others. I am myself. And thanks to people like you who support Union Rescue Mission, I feel loved.

HELP TODAY

Your support will offer hope and healing to more people, like Oscar, whose hearts have been broken by past trauma.

The Mission — April 2018 6

God created us for relationships. For children to mature into healthy adults, they need to experience love and safety, especially from their parents. If they experience trauma and broken relationships instead, the pain is so overwhelming they will search for anything — including drugs and alcohol — to escape the trauma.

Oscar, whose story is featured in this newsletter, experienced extraordinary trauma in his young childhood, losing his mother, father, and half sister all before he turned 9. He learned early on that marijuana, crack, and opiates took the pain away.

Opiates...release endorphins in the brain that mimic love, safety, and pleasure — feelings they lost in childhood.

Today, more people than ever, just like Oscar, are turning to various opiates (heroin, painkillers, fentanyl) to deal with their pain. Opiates not only block pain, they release endorphins in the brain that mimic love, safety, and pleasure — feelings they lost in childhood. But these same drugs eventually turn on them, leading to destructive addictions, health problems, and even death.

Men and women who come to us for help need more than just to get off drugs. They have to deal with the pain and traumas that led to their addictions, and they have to learn to reconnect again with others in loving relationships. That’s why Union Rescue Mission, with your support, is committed to helping our guests develop new, healthy relationships with God, with themselves, with family, and finally, with their community. Only then do they experience true recovery and true healing — today and for eternity. Just like Oscar.

STORIES FROM SKID ROW: KRYSTA

Watch our latest Story From Skid Row to see how your donations helped Krysta transition from homelessness to court advocate for The Domestic Violence Center of Santa Clarita Valley.

WATCH MORE STORIES

Opioids: a california crisis

A bag of heroin costs as little as $5 on the streets of Los Angeles.

— Los Angeles Daily News, Feb. 4, 2017

The number of deaths related to heroin increased 533% between 2002 and 2016.

— Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health

Drug-related deaths in California have increased by 30% since 1999.

— U.S. Centers for Disease Control

“In 2015, annual overdose deaths from heroin alone surpassed deaths from both car accidents and guns, with other opioid overdose deaths also on the rise.”

— Wikipedia

HELP TODAY

Your support will offer hope and healing to more people, like Oscar, whose hearts have been broken by past trauma.

The Mission — April 2018 8

Join us Saturday, June 2, in our Walk to Fight Homelessness

Join CEO Andy Bales and Union Rescue Mission for our inaugural 5k walk to provide a safe haven and life transformation for those experiencing homelessness on Skid Row. The walk begins at LA Live and travels all the way to the doorstep of Union Rescue Mission.

SIGN UP NOW
The Mission — April 2018 7

NEW LIFE IS POSSIBLE — WITH YOUR HELP

Thousands of men, women, and children all over Los Angeles County are overwhelmed with the traumas of homelessness, addictions, loneliness, and despair. A lifetime of broken relationships, abuse, and loss have left them isolated and hopeless. But thanks to you, there is hope.

Often, that first spark of hope comes with a hot meal at Union Rescue Mission. Then, with renewed hope, many people will connect with the long-term services they need to rebuild their lives. Your gifts literally give hurting men, women, and children the hope and the tangible help they need to transform their lives.

Your generous gift of $25, $35, or more will help provide hurting men, women, and children with hot meals, safe shelter, long-term help — and hope for new life this spring.

HELP TODAY

Please send the most generous gift you can today.
Thank you!

NOTES FROM ANDY

Helping Hurting People Find Healing and Home

According to a special survey I did for Iowa State University 30 years ago, 93% of people experiencing homelessness have one common denominator: a lack of connection with family. The single biggest cause of homelessness is lack of relationships.

That lack of love and relationships leads to extraordinary pain and loneliness, which then leads many people to escape those traumas with drugs, and alcohol. Then the drugs, alcohol, and addictions lead to more isolation and pain, and a lifelong vicious, destructive cycle.

At Union Rescue Mission, we help break the cycle by welcoming hurting people with the compassion of Christ into a caring community — a new family where they can experience love and connection again.

But we can only do that thanks to the support of people like you. Together, we provide a welcoming place and the chance for people to deal with their addictions, and we give them the tools they need to lead productive lives through finding a career and a way home. Your compassion really is saving lives.

Blessings,

The Mission – May 2017 5
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